Did the English language including swear words come from a German language?

The German language is the mother of the English language. Many German words have similarities to English words. Indeed in some areas, like here in the north west, you may here some people, especially older ones, using dialectal words with a similar grammatical structure to German, and some words in English follow that structure too - "children" is more German in style, where "n" is used rather than an "s" to denote a plural.

Some German words which may be considered taboo in English, are not considered so in German. A German parent would probably not mind their children saying "scheiße" but the same cannot be said in England when you hear "sh*t". Profanity is not universal, even with a country.

English is an Indo-European language which has evolved over time. It has a rich vocabulary, taking words from Germanic and Latin language and also from various other languages, including Turkish (kiosk, kismet) and Hindi (pyjama, bungalow).

I tend not to snigger at German words which might sound rude in English. I do remember an Austrian friend who was born and bred in west Cumbria and had only learnt her German from her parents, coming to my house when it was pouring with rain. "She said, "Swiss kids are really rude." "Why do you say that?" "Well, just now on the train, a kid said, 'Es schiffet.' " "So you never heard anybody in England say, 'It's pissing down'?" "Ah," she said, "yes."

Rumour has it that after producing the Silver Ghost, Rolls Royce wanted to name the next model Silver Mist. It was pointed out that a car with that name might not be popular in Germany. This may or not be true, but some English friends offered German speaking Swiss a liqueur called 'Irish Mist'. Their guests declined. 'Mist' means manure in German.

On a trip to Germany when I was 17, a young German asked one of our group what was the dirtiest word in the English language. The guy said, 'dustbin'. After that the German youth used the word frequently and he thought he has being really 'naughty'! I'm ashamed to say that no one put him right. For all I know, he's still saying it, although he'll be over 60 by now.

When the Norman invasion imposed French as the language of government and of polite society, English lost status, and the peasant patois that survived, and, against all the odds, resurfaced to become England's official language again in the late 15th cventury, was a language cursed with at least two words for eveything: a high status French word and a low status English one: compare, for instance, "people" and "folk", or "pardon" and "forgive.". In particular all the historically normal words for the private parts and the less socially acceptable bodily functions were downgraded to obscenities.

All such words have their counterparts in the related languages of Scandinavia and of Europe between the Baltic and the Rhine and Danube, but these have never been stigmatised as have their English cognates, because the regions where they are spoken never suffered four centuires of French opperssion.

Old English was very Germanic, but that doesn't mean that it was German as we think of it today. Old English did not have three genders nor capitalize every noun like modern High German does. However, to answer your question, the French snubbed a lot of Old English words because they were considered "vulgar" which meant common, but the meaning of "vulgar" slowly shifted to "indecent". The Germanic words for many bodily functions, although common words in other Germanic languages, including our sister language Frisian (the only truly mutually intelligible language with English), are considered impolite where the French equivilents such as defecate, feces, urinate, flatulence, and many others replaced common words, the lone exception being "piss" which is from French origin as well while the Germanic words "make water" are considered more polite (in Frisian, for example, it would be "makke wetter"). There are some exceptions, but not related to bodily functions, to talk of placing something before something sounds more formal than saying to place in front of it. "Front" is a somewhat mistranslated French word that originally meant forehead but due to its similarity to "fore", the meaning in English became that of the word it most resembled, not most literally meant (the word for front/fore in French is "avant").

Germanic languages all come from Old saxon, however German did not come from English or English from German. The both deeloped on a parallel and in this time the German language went through major ound shifts making German ten very different to old english. This and the fact that both countries borrowed words from different countries, languages and tribes means that they are still very different languages today.

Good question. I don't know, either. Once, I remember that I was so interested in the subject that I tried to look up the etymology of corse words on the Internet. For the f word, I found that the etymology is mostly of unknown origin. I found, though, that it may come from a Scottish word, fock, which means penis. Try to look the rest up.

Old English was a Germanic language, but as English developed as a language, it acquired vocabulary and grammar from French and other Romance languages. It is said that in addition to borrowing words from other languages, English occasionally chases them down dark alleys, bashes them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose vocabulary.

German =/= Germanic

English has had some swear words come directly from German, but not all of them.

English is a Germanic language but it didn't evolve from modern German , rather both languages evolved from a similar origin .

I dont know about the swear words but..

You are correct, English was originally a Gemanic based language that has had a lot of words from other latin based languages added to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germanic_lang...